Shadow

Oil on canvas, 16"x12", 7 hours

Okay, here's the final painting. This is for my mom for Christmas. Its based on a photo of the first dog we had when I was growing up, some kind of shepherd named Shadow. She was about 6 years older than me and lived to be 14 or so. I'd done a pretty good watercolor of this when I was a kid but it was part of a portfolio I'd used to skip a bunch of basic art classes in school and the school system lost the portfolio. I've always been pretty bummed at the loss of that watercolor but it was also my mom's favorite. When I was looking through photo albums to come up with ideas for paintings for Christmas this year, I came across the original photo of Shadow and *bing* the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head and here we are. :)

Here's a detail of the eyes: